Commencing from the concept of «Danubian Latin», Romanian researchers have always been aware that both territories must be taken into account in this regard (the Latin from the north and, respectively, south of the Danube). This methodological precept was not pursued to the fullest even by I. Fischer, who coined the term in his influential Danubian Latin (1985). In this book he states why he was unable to address the South-Danubian Latin: “The incorporation into the Empire of Moesia and Dacia created the necessary premises for the process of Romanisation, the main features of which were listed above. In the following pages I will try to review some information of a concrete character provided by historical sources concerning the unfolding of the process itself in the two provinces, foremost in Dacia, since in this province, almost the last one to be conquered and one of the first to be abandoned, the problematics of Romanisation and its persistence is more complex; our option is also determined by the accessibility of documenting, given that it is not the case in this linguistic exposition about apprehending historical issues, even less so to replace through personal research a deficient bibliographic information (with respect to Moesia)” (Fischer 1985, 25); “I will try in the pages below, again limiting ourselves to the North-Danubian part of the Daco-Moesian romanity, to paint the main features of the historical stage that starts with the abandonment of the province and ends at the start of the 7th century.” [emphasis added] (Fischer 1985, 35). In the most recent synthesis work on the history of the Romanian language, a chapter is entitled The historical context of the Romanisation of the Daco-Moesian area, but from the Moesian area only the historical context of the Romanisation of the north-eastern extremity of Moesia Inferior (MI) is presented (cf. the chapter The Romanisation of Dobrogea, coord. Sala, Ruxăndoiu 2018, p. 54–64). This confinement to Dobrudja is explained by the fact that the History of the Romanians, vol. 2, in principle dealing with the entire MI, is limited to “Dobrogea in the 2nd–3rd cent.”, which is nevertheless a step forward from I. Fischer. The author of the chapter, Ana Cristina Halichias (Sala, Ruxăndoiu 2018, p. 54-64), stresses that the issue of the Latin spoken in the south-Danubian area must also be taken into consideration. But the complexity of this topic is far from being covered in its entirety. The contributions of Bulgarian scholars are known in this regard, most published in Bulgarian and dealing almost exclusively to the characteristics of the Latin language. In Romania, the phono-morpho-syntactic characteristics of the Latin spoken in MI were analysed by Curcă (2012a). Besides this aspect, Curcă also considered several main directions: Greco-Latin glottic interferences, issues of the Greco-Latin and Latin-Greek bilingualism, the issue 14 of trilingualism. Besides these works there are those concerning the soldiers in bilingual inscriptions, code-switching, etc. The 2012a work was for the most part illustrative, without thoroughly addressing the problematics of the relationship between Latin and the other languages spoken in MI. For these reasons, we consider that the studying of this topic on an analytical level that corresponds to the advancements in this field will fill an immense gap in the research of the contribution of south-Danubian Latin to the history of the Latin language in the Lower Danube area. As a research plan, we will apply to the Moesian territories the methodologies established by Fischer and Halichias in the case of Dacia and Dobrudja. With respect to Dobrudja, Halichias paid special attention to the relations between Latin and the Hellenophone cities of the Left Pontus, a situation unlike that of Dacia. After 1989, the bibliography concerning the historical context of the Moesian territories expanded considerably. Thus, Romanian monographs were produced concerning the military (Matei-Popescu 2010), urban (Aparaschivei 2010) and rural life (Bâltâc 2011, Mihăilescu- Bîrliba 2018). Taken together, these monographs works alongside the numerous articles and studies constitute a bibliography that meets the exigencies of the saturated model (Sacks 2010) for an encompassing and relevant survey of the Romanity and the Romanisation of the Moesian territories. This considerable bibliographic body concerning the two Moesias has not been interpreted systematically and coherently from the linguistic perspective before. With respect to Moesia Superior, the works published recently, including the epigraphic ones, provide the necessary information base for understanding the complexities of the phenomenon of linguistic Romanisation in these territories (Papazoglou 1979; Mirkovic 2019; Mócsy 1970; Papazoglou et al. 1976). The importance of the problematics for understanding the genesis of the Romanian language is fundamental, since this is the first time in Romanian history of Romanian language when the entire south-Danubian Latinity (as part of the Danubian Latin), specifically the provinces of Moesia Superior and Moesia Inferior, is taken into consideration. Our project proposes a holistic analysis of linguistic Romanization in both provinces, a study that has not been achieved before. The importance of the topics is revealed by integrating the results in the global context of the Romanization process, in order to achieve a diachronic view related to other provinces. Also, the importance of the proposed project consists in the different ways in which surviving linguistic evidence can be used to track movements of people.
LinguistRom 